(RE)BUILD (RE)BUILD (RE)BUILD: THE DISASTER DEBT TRAP With the total cost of infrastructure damage is estimated to be over $280 million and unmet calls on the government to reconfigure the budget to help Filipinxs back on their feet from an already depleted disaster fund, the Philippines falls into its cycle of relying on foreign aid (both formal and informal through remittances from emigrated Filipinx nationals) to fill the gap. The Bicol provincial government reports PHP 1.4 billion (approximately $29 million USD) in damage to agricultural lands, with its main crop abaca at 92% of these losses———impacting 20,000 hectares of crops and thus 20,000 farmers. For the Future, a grassroots transnational organization of twelve (12) young Filipinos under 26 from Manila and New York, were among the several advocacy groups that called mass media to, “Change your headlines. It is not ‘Filipino resiliency’” (anymore). Their public call to action for immediate direct money transfer donations for typhoon relief posted on Instagram on November 2nd, 2020 (the day after the storm), quotes a TEDx talk by Issa Barte on Filipinx resiliency:
“No one can doubt the resiliency of the Filipino. It’s been tried, tested and worn down since anyone can remember. But this beacon of misconstrued hope that we can always rise again should not only tell you the story of how we can withstand suffering, but of how we deserve more. These headlines of our smiling kababayans reaching out through floods or storms should not only speak of their endurance, but of the things that put them in that position in the first place. Our ability to withstand the worst should not only be a beacon of strength, but a narrative to question who’s putting us in this position to have to be resilient in the first place. People can’t focus on prospering when they’re focused on surviving.”
In another post on November 12th, 2020, the For the Future team highlights the shared reality of many Filipinxs whose emigration story is rooted in escaping the dire conditions that still plague the nation:
“They were vulnerable before the storms came. We deserve better than to be celebrated for going through the worst. We deserve to prosper. Not just survive.” The above highlights the systemic ways that the reactive nature of constantly rebuilding after disaster continues to act as a barrier for meaningful improvements in the livelihoods of the most poor in the Philippines, exposing opportunities for disaster capitalism to take hold. Disaster capitalism, where the fear of disaster is exploited to facilitate the entry of a capitalist project, perhaps being reflected in current Duterte administration’s ironfist approach on infrastructure development through their “Build Build Build” (BBB) program that pushes for dispersing economic activities in the countryside so as to address the skewed development and its associated congestion / traffic issues from urban centres like Metro Manila. With a portfolio of 20,000 proposed infrastructure projects that include roads, highways, farm-to-market roads, airports, seaports, terminals, evacuation centres, lighthouses, hospitals, schools, government centres and more, the program is a top priority of the Duterte administration and claims the highest budget allocation for infrastructure in all of Philippine history (Malindog-Uy, 2020). Despite challenges of lockdown and quarantine measures from COVID-19, flagship infrastructure projects continue to be completed including 4,536 flood mitigation structures to expand protected flood-prone areas and 82 evacuation centers (built by the Department of Public Works and Highways, DPWH) in 52 provinces (with 55 more underway). But the rapid nature of BBB is understood through its improvements towards developing “land, air, sea, and inter-island connectivity and mobility” with its 121 airport projects, 369 commercial, social, and tourism seaports, and 23,657 kilometres of roads, and 4,959 bridges built since 2017 (Malindog-Uy, 2020).
